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In one of the pictures it appears that whatever was in the water was propelling itself along using its two flippers, one at each side of its body.

If what Mr Campbell pictured was a type of hitherto undiscovered creature, then it could mean that the Loch Ness monster has been breeding - or, on the day he saw it, swimming around with an offspring or mate.

Mr Campbell was around five miles south of the village of Drumnadrochit on the western shores of Loch Ness while on a 40-mile bicycle ride between Fort Augustus and Inverness on hill tracks on August 21 with his son Fraser, 13, and family friend Mrs Karen MacPhee, 54, when the two shapes appeared in the water.

Loch Ness has long been a site of mystery (Photo: Getty)

Mr Campbell's son also saw the 'creatures' but Mrs MacPhee was cycling some way behind and did not get a good look. Mr Campbell says they watched for around 30 seconds before losing sight of the objects but he managed to take a photograph using the camera on his phone.

He says: "At the time we saw it we had stopped for a rest and to admire the view. It seemed to appear suddenly from nowhere.

"I said to my son: 'What is that in the water?' He said to me that it looked like a big animal.

"I said 'I think you're right' and grabbed my camera phone to take a picture.

"We watched for around 30 seconds before it disappeared from view and by that time Karen had caught up and she saw it for around five seconds.

"We talked about it afterwards obviously and we just had no idea what it could be. I would estimate they were ten metres in length and I took the picture from around 400 metres away.

"I was saying to my son that we had just seen the Loch Ness monster and he was saying 'Yes, right'."

Ian says that he's sure there was something in the image, shown here in close-up (Photo: Ketts News Service)

Mr Campbell, of Taynuilt, Argyll, who works as an environmental health regulatory officer for Argyll and Bute Council, said he knew the area well. It was a calm day and he had never seen anything like that before.

"I am convinced that what I saw was two creatures,' he said.

The legend of the Loch Ness Monster first came to worldwide attention in 1933, but the earliest report of a monster in the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St Columba by Adomnán, written in the seventh century AD.